Bigger Spin / EP 002 - Rémy Taveira

article: Aymeric Nocus

today's guest on the bigger spin - our text-based complement to seb charlot and arnaud dedieu's new french skate podcast, Big Spin - is no other than clichy-sous-bois youth extraordinaire, Rémy Taveira. strong of a thirst of discovery, over the past decade, rémy has utilized that trait to its fullest potential, most often ending up far out of his original path: one with the notorious teenage tour as its starting point, too! a longtime antiz skateboards representative, rémy's relentless involvement in many a project at once, covering ground on just as many continents, too, has driven him to worldwide recognition, most notably due to the latest installments in jacob harris' "Atlantic Drift", or the #buzzfeed generated by his death-defying, photogenic ollie at the Louvre, off one of the fountains into the next one oN which a bmxer is said to have impaled himself trying the same thing, years ago... gruesome anecdotes aside, the now already twenty-five-years-old and well-traveled ripper keeps figuring his own self out in the happiest of ways, one of which being exposing his story on the big spin podcast and consequently, here and now on the bigger spin, delivered straight to you complete with stories, digressions, and illustrations under the form of digitalized photographs and sketchy youtube embeds!

Let's suppose we're to play the popular (really?...), maybe rather dada-esque game of trying to summarize the past decade in only one word; then, given the booming rise of social media, user content and public traffic stats (and their monetary implications) over the last ten years, one surely safe key word to emerge and qualify as such would have to be "buzzfeed" (... as already brought up in the introduction paragraph, yes; we may be getting old).

With most everybody caught up in the popular, modern social scheme consisting in counting numerals rather than appreciating essential quality, hopefully you for one can still watch eight-minute long skate videos, regardless of how branded. But if you've made it this deep into this tortuous article, then you very well might qualify as a living proof that it is still possible to exhibit certain valuable traits at this point in time, thereby silencing our bouts of angst (and consequent bitterness) and really, we can't thank you enough for this, can we?

And the rest of you please, don't feel left out as with Instagram comes the convenience of getting to simply click either this link or the thumbnail below to watch Rémy's aforementioned stunt at the Louvre, now stripped of a considerable chunk of its artistic and commercial presentation (and the corresponding extra duration), almost bare but never vulnerable, now potentially exposed to your retinas on loop till' near infinity.

Now is worth bringing up that, whichever camp you happen to be on so long as you display any interest in classic artistic endeavors, and are into contemplating at least as much as you are into counting, then you might appreciate Rémy's frequently film-fueled Tumblr page. For curiosity's sake, if anything!

Anyway, the next one we're about to post is a timeless classic, and the full-length opus Rémy refers to as his personal skate bible growing up: no less than TransWorld SKATEboarding's 1999 film, "The Reason", their ninth video and arguably the one that cemented the TWS legacy as the indispensable canon it still is renowned as to this day. "The Reason" featured the respective styles of Gershon Mosley, Cairo Foster, Danny Montoya, Danny Gonzales, Stevie Williams and Matt Mumford at their prime, alongside a few just as legendary others, sprinkled here and there throughout several shared sections. You just have to watch it here, and take the appropriate notes - we trust you on that.

Click to lose yourself into some kind of "The Reason"-induced vortex. Not one of the worst fates, really.

An eclectic mix of stylistic influences bound to have drowned a few vulnerable souls into oceans of confusion, but one that only sparked up Rémy's curiosity so much that it eventually drove him to explore first his more familiar surroundings (see the King Of Tromé filmed in the streets of the French capital), then a bigger-scaled Europe as soon as the early 2010's, in company of Benoît et Thomas Renaux; an improvised trip around the old continent that resulted in the following video edit and zine.

Subsequently, Rémy will get so sparked up he will venture even further away than that, to more remote locations overseas such as Costa Rica - a trip to which he caught up with local genius and Hi-8 format mastermind, Francisco Saco, and eventually filmed a whole section for said author's full-length video epic, "Canasta". Admittedly it is a blunt statement that you really should treat yourself with that incredible, historic skate film here or, if half an hour of your time is something you deem too precious to devote to some real, raw radness, then Rémy's segment can also be streamed here (or below) as a stand-alone clip. But are you ready enough?

Every now and then, Rémy finds himself running into the Hellfest festival alongside Antiz Skateboards' head-in-chief Julien Bachelier but also Jérôme Chevallier, Samu Karvonen, Roland Hirsch, Teemu Pirinen and just as many skateboards, all in the middle of trying to dodge the Absurd Skateboards team's relentlessly russian assaults. In the midst of his maturity, it seems that Rémy has slowly come to terms with reality and progressively let go of his oh-so-discernable dream of one day repping Menace Skateboards at its peak; it is now impeccably freed of such a concern - and obviously sober - that, in the video below, he can be observed wandering amid the sound and the fury, strong of his own character and the certainty of having shed off most-if-not-all of his youthful insecurities, unwaveringly glancing into the future and never looking back, peacefully resigned like a man.

Onto playing one more game, this time consisting in trying to decide whether the Hellfest or Costa Rica qualifies as the most exotic destination as far as producing urban skateboarding documentation. Well, maybe Jacob Harris' short "Nicaragua" will prove to be some kind of happy medium; after all, the author of skate films such as "Eleventh Hour" and "Vase", or the "Atlantic Drift" series (also prominently featuring Rémy) is notorious for contenting most everybody. A true audiovisual gem produced by the grand Grey Skate Mag, "Nicaragua" dips Rémy, Mike Arnold and Sylvain Tognelli into the sauce of some mysterious country complete with its own cultural codes and landmarks; the flavor of which Jake's presentation only exalts and mythologizes to the point of near phantasm - although to be fair, more hints could have been dropped regarding the exact localization of such an amazing place, as it really isn't obvious and such a lack of descriptive concern, albeit quite the artistic choice, already has prevented most fans from booking their next holidays there.

Finally, let's wrap this pack of lies and inanities up with one last display of good taste from Rémy, under the form of his favorite skate part: Jake Johnson's in "Mindfield" (Alien Workshop, 2009). Not much else to be commented on (thankfully, right?), as Jake's skating itself always does all the talking and this clip is no exception.